Sunday, October 2, 2011

IIE - Extra Middle School Day!


Once the youngers and middles headed home it was just the boys and I who remained on Matinicus for an extra day of curriculum work with the other middle schoolers!

Obviously Quinn did not get the memo about being excited for our work day! (I think he wanted the youngers to stick around so he could run around the playground some more!)

We said our goodbyes and piled into a truck to be transported to LUNCH!

Lunch = all the amazing leftovers from the pot luck supper! SCORE!

We got word that there were some rather large storms headed our way so broke down our tents and moved into the Matinicus school for the day/night.

What team work!

We started off our middle school work with some warm-up games.

And moved into the exercise we call "compass points," where we figure out what "direction" we are when working in a group setting... a north, south, east, or west. Dalton is totally a west... the detailed, organized member of the group. He had some fellow wests to be OCD with :)

The Easts! They are GREAT at figuring out the big picture of a project and defining a groups purpose!

Quinny took notes for the Norths... the ones who just like to jump in a start moving. They are often the ones with not a whole lot of patience and sometimes move a bit too quickly, BUT they are great motivators and are often very creative in getting the work done!

And lastly, the Souths... the are the caring, compassionate ones in the group who make sure everyone is heard from and feeling good! I do love Souths!

We then set some group norms to make all of the different "directions" feel like they would be comfortable in our group work.

After compass points and norms it was time to dive into the curriculum work.. the kids look over the standards they will be meeting in science and social studies this trimester and highlighted parts that interested them, concerned them, and excited them!

Lots of good stuff up here!

The kids then moved onto brainstorming activities they could do that would demonstrate mastery of these standards!

We used LOTS of stickies to come up with the activities list!



Writing down all their brilliant ideas!

We broke the activities into different categories!

All of this curriculum work was so exciting the teachers were continuously documenting all that was happening! It is not everyday you get to see students helping to plan the curriculum they are going to be studying! It is pretty cool stuff!

We took a little break for some yoga mid afternoon.

Finn the dog was just exhausted from all of our work!

After even MORE work we ended just in time for dinner, movies, and sleep!

Rise and shine! It is another morning of work for these middle schoolers!

We got straight to work on our science curriculum the second day. The kids were tired but they pushed through. As we finished up our work for the morning and the kids were complaining about how much work we had them do I heard Dalton say, "Hey, at least our teacher's want to here what we have to say about this stuff. Not all kids are that lucky." Couldn't have said it better myself dear Dalti!

Time to walk to the wharf and head home! The time just flew by!

A quick lunch before boarding...

Loading the gear.

Last hugs...

And off we went!

It was a gorgeous day for a boat ride.

So long Matinicus!


We arrived in Rockland and had time for one VERY important stop before driving to Port Clyde to meet our ferry!

One final boat ride and we were home. I have to say that my very favorite part of field trips is analyzing the entire thing with D&Q on our way back to Monhegan. We sure do have a good time together.

Ahhh.... home. It was a GREAT trip and it was GREAT to be back on Monhegan.

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